The blog formerly known as Holistic Learning ... Enki and Waldorf Homeschooling

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

We Can't Do It All

There, I said it. Transitioning from Christopherus/traditional Waldorf to Enki there is no way for us to finish all of Enki grade 1 before it is time to take a break and plan grade 2. The break has to happen...I don't see us going past September without needing a break, and time to plan.

It is okay. Beth is right; the boys would be in a mixed grade classroom at an Enki school, and even within one grade you would have skills ranging from a grade below to at least a grade ahead.

We are not behind. Breathe. We are where we are on the path. We aren't trying to catch up to anyone. I will never regret having given my children time to be young, and I will not take away their break in order to "catch them up" to Enki standards. I will see everything as part of the journey, and not kick myself for not having started Enki last fall. Heck, I tried to start Enki last fall. Things were beyond my control, and we did the best we could. What we chose was nourishing in its own way.

I have to go back and ground them in the math. Looking at it, I am going to take them all the way back to the first Enki Number Qualities block. In fact, I think this is how we are going to finish out grade 1:

5/30-6/30: Number Qualities (we'll be on vacation 6/16-6/25, so we'll get through number qualities and greater than/less than, have a week off, and come back to finish even/odd).

(4 days off for the 4th of July holiday)

7/5-7/28: Fairy Tale Summaries and Sight Readers (we're going to give this a shot - one thing we haven't been doing all year is sight words, so we'll just see where it takes us).

7/31-8/25: Four Processes (we did this block with Christopherus and they seemed to "get it", but I want to get them really grounded in it).

(3 days off for beach camping)

8/29-9/22: Nature Stories/Adventure

(End of grade 1, Autumnal Equinox, 8 day beach vacation)

So we never get to Fact Families, and that is okay. It is better to get them grounded in the basics than to check off everything on a list. T-Guy won't be exactly where he might have been had we started Enki last fall, but J-Baby will have been exposed to a lot for being 6YO (and not 7YO until next April).

So the story I read this morning sleeps for a couple of weeks. This afternoon we'll talk about zero and read a story for the number 1.

2 comments:

Your so right! Homeschooling is a journey not a series of mini-sprints. I am amazed by how in sync we are with our situations. I was going to try to work more through the summer, but Im not sure that will be best for us. Your still WAY ahead of my family and doing really well. When I think of where we were last fall we have come a long way, Im not sure how, but progress is there and it often happens (at this age) in spite of our efforts. LOL

I had planned to take the summer off, but really, July and August aren't our best outdoor months, whereas fall is just beautiful. Also, I really felt that J-Baby needed more time in grade 1, and that there was no way I would want to start grade 2 before January 2007. Now that I have explored more of the academic side of Enki I can say that both boys will benefit from more time spent in grade 1.

As for the rhythm, it takes time. My friends will tell you that I have been actively working on daily rhythm for more than 2 years now. Isn't it great to look back and see how far you've come?